


Dream of us in the deep blue sea

by captainhurricane



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Longing, Post-Movie(s), Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 22:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13350828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: Zelda doesn't dream. Giles lives on.Elisa and her monster live and love and live and live and live.





	Dream of us in the deep blue sea

**Author's Note:**

> this movie made my want to be in love and live forever in that beautiful warm colourful bubble of Elisa's apartment. 
> 
> When will someone love me like Elisa and her monster love each other? ;_;

The thing is, Zelda isn't much of a dreamer. She's gotten some things she wants, some things she wishes for when there's no one else to hear. Except for Elisa. To Elisa Zelda told so many things, filled the silence between them with her own words and her own dreams, read Elisa's dreams and wishes from her quick fingers and her soft, soft smiles. 

Because out of the two of them, Elisa was the dreamer: literally, the one who had vivid dreams each night, who danced by herself when she thought no one else was watching. Out of the two of them, Elisa was the one with a twinkle in her eye and a kind heart that no one seemed to notice.

Someone did.

When Zelda had first heard what had went on during the downpour in a harbour ways away, she had sat down and covered her face. She had thought of Elisa and her monster and known. She had known the instant the two had laid eyes on each other that there is a story that no one else can tell. Certainly Elisa had had Zelda and Giles, but had they ever touched her soul the way the river god had?

Zelda thinks not.

She’s not much of  dreamer but now she dreams they are still out there somewhere, silent Elisa and her silent monster, both free, both loving and being loved in return.

Zelda had not quite understood at first, but oh. She had known. She had known that this is where Elisa’s story had been leading her all along: that knowledge had been confirmed by the time Elisa’s mouth had gotten thin with determination, her brows furrowed and Zelda had had no other option except let them go.

She dreams of them sometimes, a river god and his water princess and wakes from those dreams knowing, deep in her heart, that they are out there somewhere, safe and alive and far, far away.

X

Giles keeps the apartment next to him, rents it out although he barely has the money for his own. He can’t bare to be parted from it: from all of Elisa’s things, left ownerless, left as lonely as her. It hurts, at first to think of the two of them: Elisa deathly still in the creature’s arms, him cradling her like she is the most precious thing to him in all the world. And what does Giles know? Maybe she was. Maybe she is.

Elisa and the creature had found ways to communicate, she had found a kindred spirit, he had found- what? A reason to not be lonely anymore.

Now, Giles isn’t a researcher or an expert in all things in the world but he has imagination. He had seen it too, even when the creature had eaten his cat (oh, poor Pandora) and known that this here is the only one of his kind, a creature lonely beyond all imagination.

And he had seen something in Elisa, found something in her that had touched him.

Of course, Giles had been rather confused at first, a little afraid for Elisa’s well-being and for his own. But she had convinced him to help with teary eyes and stern, sharp gestures of her soundless words. Nowadays the moments when Giles thinks he had made a mistake in helping Elisa and the creature are rarer and rarer.

Nowadays Giles just misses her. Sometimes her co-worker comes by and chats with Giles over tea. They don’t really talk about what happened, mostly just about Elisa and their days.

Only sometimes they wonder where the two of them are. Neither of them thinks they’re dead, that Elisa’s dead. The creature wouldn’t let her die, he wouldn’t.

Giles tells Zelda of the one time he had thought he had seen them: the river god with the beautiful blue shimmer under his scales and Elisa, as naked as the day she was born, dripping wet, her hand curled around her monster’s.

But Giles had looked away and they had vanished.

Maybe it was a dream.

Maybe it was not.

X

X

Underneath blue and green and in the cold, cold deep, they swim. The river god and his princess. The kind princess and her monster.

His touch is cold but she no longer shivers from the chill, just the pleasure of it.

Her own touch has gone colder but he takes it, he laughs his quiet, indescribable laugh in the dark and the deep blue.

In his own way, he tells her that he loves her, cradles her face between his hands and kisses her like the day when he brought her back to life.

In her own way, she’s always told him she loves him and now she tells him so every day, in every little way.

They go up to the surface from time to time, more for her than for him but she loves it no less. She can smell the air and the rain and the sun and bask in the life and the love that her beautiful monster has given her.

There’s a part in the world that will be a danger to them for all their lives. But it is fine. Neither of them is alone anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> ugh guillermo del toro what are you doing to me
> 
> i wanna see this movie a hundred more times


End file.
